Mina Titi Liu (page 6) is the executive director of the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco, the nation’s oldest organization advocating for the civil and legal rights of Asians and Pacific Islanders. Ms. Liu has had a long career advancing social justice issues both domestically and internationally. She has served as the Law and Rights program officer for the Ford Foundation, and as a consultant to the U.S. State Department and USAID. Prior to joining the Caucus, she was the Garvey Schubert Barer Visiting Professor in Asian Law at University of Washington School of Law. A Mixtec Indian from Oaxaca, in southern Mexico, Hugo Morales (page 10) is the executive director of Radio Bilingüe, Inc., which he helped found in 1976. In 1994, he became the first resident of the San Joaquin Valley to be a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. He is the immediate past chair of the Rosenberg Foundation’s Board of Directors.
Dr. Manuel Pastor (page 4) is professor of Geography and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He currently directs the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity at USC and is co-director, with Dowell Myers, of USC’s Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration. He has authored and co-authored various books, including Searching for the Uncommon Common Ground: New Dimensions on Race in America.
The president of Equal Justice Society, Eva Jefferson Paterson (page 16) has campaigned for civil rights and racial justice for more than three decades. She served as the executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area before founding EJS. Ms. Paterson also co-founded and chaired the California Coalition for Civil Rights for 18 years.
Thomas A. Saenz (page 6) is the president and general counsel of MALDEF, where he leads the civil rights organization’s five offices in pursuing litigation, policy advocacy, and community education to promote the civil rights of Latinos living in the United States. Mr. Saenz re-joined MALDEF in August 2009, after spending four years on Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s executive team as counsel to the mayor. He previously spent 12 years at MALDEF practicing civil rights law as a staff attorney, regional counsel, and vice president of litigation. MacArthur Foundation Fellow Lateefah Simon (page 8) is part of a new wave of African American civil rights and community leaders. Currently executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, Ms. Simon has advocated tirelessly on behalf of communities of color, youth and women since her teenage years. At age 19, she became executive director of the Center for Young Women’s Development, a role she held for 11 years.
Justice in California
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